Snow in Montreal
|
Posted:Jun 20, 2016 12:20 pm
Last Updated:Jul 17, 2016 12:41 pm
7971 Views
|
When she climbed on the bus she was already weary and it was only 4PM. She’d tried for a plane but the snow was thickening and flights were being grounded. Her appointment was at 8AM the next morning, there was no way to change it. No way to change anything now.
She selected a seat near the middle next to the window and prayed no one would sit beside her but of course within minutes the bus filled.
Soon, everyone was chatting about Montreal and the theater. Suddenly the bus which had been full, but relatively quiet turned into a tour guide of where to go, what to see and which places to eat cheap that were just too divine to miss.
The ride through the deepening snow passed quickly and since many of the travelers were staying at the same hotel, some doubled up and spent hours laughing and talking about this wonderful city they were about to explore. But not her. She went to sleep at a sensible hour.
At 6:30 she was up, showered and hailed a taxi. The cab negotiated the slushy streets for over 45 minutes before it dropped her off in front of a steel door in a downtrodden business area. Hesitant, but determined, she entered.
To her chagrin, 4 of the 5 women she had been with yesterday were standing in the waiting room, silently staring at the floor. They looked up, and then down quickly. No one spoke.
One by one they disappeared into the back room.
Her flight home was uneventful. She talked to her seat mate about the funny little café where she’d had an amazing crème brulee. And to this day, she wonders if Montreal is as beautiful as some people say. There is no way she will ever find out, It is a city lost to her.
|
|
|
5
Comments
|
|
size does matter
|
Posted:Jun 18, 2016 8:50 am
Last Updated:Jun 21, 2016 10:09 am
8265 Views
|
Working dogs come in all shapes and sizes but farm dogs are usually hounds. Hounds are great dogs because they like and they herd pretty well and the sound of their call is mournful and pushes animals away from it.
My uncle’s hound was called Wodie, a good old dog, slept in the barn except for the winter when he had house privileges, fiercely protected my cousins, and sought out any female for miles around His favorite was a tiny toy poodle who lived about a mile away in a lovely restored barn filled with an architect and a doctor and an obnoxious , Blaise, whom we never played with despite the parents on both sides trying to broker deals for months.
Blaise, the brat, once dared me to swallow a spoon full of mustard without crying, the prize being his baseball cards should I succeed. At the age of three and 4 my sister and I for reasons unknown had downed a jar of pickle juice….I was ready. Down it went, no tears and my cousin Ed reached for the cards. BTB, snugged them to his chest and went running to his parents, claiming theft. Brat. But that was just a side bet, the reason we were there in the first place was a singular one.
Wodie had lingered with the toy poodle. No one would have known except for the fact that Wodie being a rather large and the poodle being diminutive…….well, they got stuck. The hound call could be heard for miles. My uncle tried bag balm first. The fire department tried to hose them apart.. nope. The vet came and gave both of them tranquilizers which made them loopy but not loose and didn’t seem to do a damn thing for Wodie’s sincere and ardent regard for the little tart
BBQ’s were lit, hotdogs cooked (I know, right?) and we all waited. until finally Wodie wilted.
My uncle decided the cards, though fairly won would remain with the brat. Our family would take Wodie home and make sure his wiener was okay. We jumped into the back of the truck with Wodie who seemed positively lit from within. Uncle Wes was bent over the wheel and shaking. I asked if he was okay. He turned to us through the open slidy windows and his face was covered with tears and he was gulp laughing so hard he could barely breathe. Wodie licked his face and Wes said, “Best I ever had.”
We had ice cream with blackberries when we got back to the farm and listened to my Uncle and Aunt out on the porch snickering in the dark.
|
|
|
6
Comments
|
|
replete
|
Posted:Jun 15, 2016 11:45 am
Last Updated:Jun 18, 2016 7:54 am
7466 Views
|
Someone once asked me to describe an orgasm. It was an interesting exercise. I could say that no two orgasms are alike and in a way that would be almost true. But there are physiological similarities despite the environmental, mental and emotional circumstances so that was sort of a cop out. The most difficult part of the exercise wasn’t really the idea of it but the actual recall.
And that is where women who have orgasms and women who fake orgasms differ. If a woman can perfectly describe her orgasm to you………she doesn’t have them. If she fumbles around a lot with the words and the feelings and then kind of bleeds off into nothing, then she likely does.
It’s impossible to describe something perfectly when you’ve gone outside yourself and are in place where words aren’t substantive any longer. Where the body has taken over and language in its most useful form has ceased to exist. Where the sounds that you make are primitive and natural but not words per se. Some may sound like words but those that speak in tongue may also sound like they are using words……and they aren’t.... or at least not in words one might recognize.
The first time I remember hearing myself make those noises, I startled and came back to reality. I didn’t orgasm but faked it nicely and vowed never to question my body like that again. It’s rather like letting go in meditation - it works only if you don’t suddenly say to yourself, oh look, I’ve let go. Smiles. If you do, wham, you are right back to finding yourself twisted in a lotus sitting on your living room floor.
I know a lot of people are into tantric…..i never really had to go there and it seems like a lot of work to me and sort of rigid. The body knows what it wants if we can just give it sway.
|
|
|
6
Comments
|
|
the midnight call
|
Posted:Jun 13, 2016 1:48 pm
Last Updated:Jun 18, 2016 7:55 am
7358 Views
|
you drive the car.
you don’t remember a single moment of it or even if you breathed.
you’re inside the building and in line behind someone who is asking about something and your head is expanding and if they don’t stop talking and move you may scream or shove them away and then everyone will think you’re crazy and no one will listen to you and the answers will be lost and you’ll never know but they move and you say his name and they tell you to take a seat but that’s not possible so you rush through the doors as they open from the inside out while a policeman reaches for your arm but you snap it away and run through and you are standing finally in the space where he must be and the sounds are loud and people are moving fast and the smell is badbadbad and you hear his name come out of your mouth in a long moan but too soft so soft that it will never be heard in this loud and angry room so you scream his name for a long time until two bluegreen eyes look into yours and say come with me and so you do because you have nothing and no one and nowhere you stumble behind her forever until she places your hand on the side of his bed where you see the whitest skin mottled purple and blue the darkest hair plastered red.
Alive.
|
|
|
7
Comments
|
|
not a bad trade
|
Posted:Jun 7, 2016 9:16 am
Last Updated:Jul 15, 2016 8:44 am
7634 Views
|
The first time you feel that little clench in your belly, and your knees seem to lose all bone density.
To remember that moment is to slip back 40 years or step sideways an inch and smell the flat iron of the Charles River in June.
I worked then at the Window Shop in Harvard Square as a bartender and was called down to the tea room because someone had asked to speak with me. The Window Shop was a nonprofit, aiding Jewish immigrants and sold pastries to the very wealthy on Brattle Street in Cambridge. Birds flocked to the small terrace where people would gather for tea, snatching crumbs, until they could barely lift their bodies into the air….not unlike our patrons. Once a bird plummeted to its death on the table of a particularly obese guest…a cautionary tale.
As he stepped into the tea room, he slipped and stumbled up the stairs and I recognized him. He was awkward and seemed so unlike the athlete I could see inside his body. We had met the Saturday before at a going away dinner for my lover who was leaving for Paris to write. I was seated next to this man at the table and while no one else deigned to speak to me, he was kind and funny.
“You’ve been traded.”
Those were his words when I sat down across from him. “He gave you to me when he left”.
I stood and went back to work. The old man who kept the books for the agency and who gave me my first taste of e.e.cummings, was behind me as I took the stairs. He asked if I could come in on Saturday and I agreed. Funny, the things you remember.
When I left work at 6:30, he was waiting for me at the gate that let out onto Brattle Street. He took my hand as though it belonged to him. I looked up at him and could see he was nervous
.
He wouldn’t stop talking. Or couldn’t.
When we reached the Charles, the sun was lower and we walked along the river until the day faded. As light left the sky, I slid my hand from his, letting the sweat dry, sighing.
He turned, taking me by the shoulders and bending his knees, he captured my mouth. He had no idea that I was in charge, that this was my game, my rules were in play and that nothing he could do or say would make any difference. But then, no man knew that. You see, since I was 15, I detested men. I lived to make them suffer.
He saved my life that day.
|
|
|
7
Comments
|
|
balls
|
Posted:Jun 6, 2016 12:27 pm
Last Updated:Jun 16, 2016 10:47 am
7457 Views
|
When you are going through a significant change in your life, you start to take inventory. For me, because I am my mother’s , I clean. I take closets apart and send things to shelters, dispose of things I haven’t used in years and I am ruthless.
Except for this shiny red bowling ball. I have had this bowling ball forever. I have moved it from apartment to apartment to my now home. I have never used, it but I have never put it into a yard sale or thrown it away in a purge.
I have no memory of when it came into my life. It seems to have been with me forever.
As I was doing the hall closet and ditching old Christmas paper and hand weights and a vent cover for I have no idea what….there it was. Again.
It’s a glittery red one and once dusted is quite pretty in an absolutely useless way. I don’t bowl although I did recently with my bff for giggles and scored a 39 for ten frames while a 6 year old in the next lane made a 72. He was thrilled and kept pointing at my score which they display on a screen on the wall so everyone can see it – isn’t that nice?. But that was little balls and this ball is one of the big ones with holes in it that would wrench my shoulder out in seconds. One string with the little balls and I was lamed for three days.
I filled a large trash bag with stuff to chuck, swept, washed, organized and replaced the keepers and stepped back and damned if that ball wasn’t sitting right there on the newly waxed closet floor…..
I know, I know. I must have put it there. But what is its magic that it survives when even troll dolls can’t? Not to worry the troll dolls went to the little girl downstairs who claimed them on sight much to the dismay of her mother.
Hey, maybe it was the mother who slipped the ball in the closet before her spotted it…….
Anyway, too much juju for me to fight. It stays.
|
|
|
5
Comments
|
|
the power of men
|
Posted:May 30, 2016 11:14 am
Last Updated:Jun 16, 2016 10:50 am
8020 Views
|
When I was a wee lass, I was blessed with the presence of two men, my grandfather and my uncle, both farmers and both men who loved the sound of their own voices. They were tale tellers and jokesters and life lived in them as though it had found a place that was roomy.
I spent most summers at my uncle’s farm with cousins of my age and learned how to do chores and live in nature and feel the freedom of being in a place that had boundaries that were a quarry and a river. We followed nature’s light, rising early and sleeping when the sun went down. Each Tuesday and Thursday I spent the day with my grandfather. Grampa, whose name was Raymond Wesley, was called Tom by all who knew him and he nicknamed everyone else in much the same fashion. I was called little Irish.
My days with him were magical days, spent in the fields as he terrified me with the history of the world and my family, telling me horrifying stories as I ran in panicky circles around him as we walked. His history lessons became the truth of my youth and while as a of 7 his large words would often slip by me , the core was there for me to swallow. When it became too large and my circles too frantic, we would climb our sitting rock, and I would collapse against him as the sun beat down on us both and sip nectar from honeysuckle while his calloused hands untwirled the curls on my head, sending me to sleep. Such safety is rare. As I grew older, the stories changed but the rock always ended our day and I trusted him for the truth til the day he died.
The time at my uncle’s was gentler by far. He was a stunning man – perhaps the first man I ever looked at and thought the word beautiful. His name was Wesley but everyone called him Mike…….grampa again. My mama called him Wes and loved him more than anything. I think she gave me to him for the summer so I could know him like she had, he was that special. He would come in from the barn after the night milking kick off his boots and shout, where is my woman. Auntie would look up and her face would shine……..just shine. My cousin Jim would scoot us all out the door. Isn’t it wonderful for a man to so enchant his wife and for his to know it? He became for me the man I would marry.
These men formed a triad along with my father. I would sit in my bedroom window and watch the street where my father would walk home to us each night from his work. As a preteen I would weep and imagine life without him. As a little girl I would restlessly move back and forth in anticipation of him turning the corner and that moment when he would appear. The best times were the winter when the streetlights were on and would catch him…he wore a fedora and under the light he looked like a movie star. My father was all things safe and sure.
I love men.
|
|
|
8
Comments
|
|
the eyes do not have it
|
Posted:May 23, 2016 12:05 pm
Last Updated:Jul 5, 2016 3:07 pm
7655 Views
|
i was watching something or other and a man identified a suspect by remembering his eyes while the person was wearing a balaclava.
it is sais that the eyes are the windows to the soul. and a lot of people will say they notice eyes first. i doubt that/)
let's try a little experiment, shall we. think of your five closest friends. what color eyes do they have. could you draw the shape of their eyes? if you can, well you go sit over there because you are in a minority......grins. and you don't support my idea.
i think for me, i could identify the people i know by their smell. i have a finely honed nose and smells get to me like nothing else. unless a person covers their natural odor with a scent, i think it is very distinct. i could tell who was outside my office before they knocked on my door. it isn't that they were stinky.......at least not all of them...smiles.....but they were themselves.
i also think mouths are more distinctive than eyes. i would watch mouths at meetings for "tells". people could keeps their eyes rather stable, but mouths would moue or twitch or get licked........always in play it seemed. and the ines around the mouth tell a lot as well. anger, disdain, happiness.
so, the question is what do you use for your silent tell. and could you remember the color of the eyes of your nearest and dearest? and if you couldn't.......does it matter in the least?
|
|
|
7
Comments
|
|
madmen
|
Posted:May 22, 2016 10:27 am
Last Updated:May 23, 2016 10:56 am
7177 Views
|
I have binged on the series. it has filled two weeks of all my television time.
now I am bereft to no longer have these people to visit.
I know this is old hat for most of y'all. but these are my new friends and they all just left town....forever. and I never got to kick Pete in the nuts.
when a good show goes away.....and this was a really good show.....I hated everybody almost as much as I yearned to fix them. and so right on the times. the times I lived through. well, when it goes away, it's like losing friends. that's when you know they did a damn fine job.
this week....a very fine man, a man I have known since I was 14, is also leaving. he sits in a chair and looks out a window at the birds on the feeders in his yard. if you sit with him he will smile at you, let you wipe the drool from his lips without comment or aggravation.
his hands move constantly in a sort of nimble dance through the air as though he is conducting the energy or the light. he concentrates: his hands twist, turn, sweep.
there are no words or sounds. his face is still and his body is nearly rigid. inside, there is something though....his hands so elegantly state that.
it is what I watch while I sit with him. his hand song. his coda. how I wish I could hear it.
|
|
|
5
Comments
|
|
something in the way she moves
|
Posted:May 20, 2016 11:11 am
Last Updated:Jun 13, 2016 12:53 pm
7056 Views
|
when she walked into the room, heads turned. it isn't that she is beautiful or even particularly pretty. but there is something about her. something about the way she moves through the space that seems to lighten the air. no, that's not it.
she displaces the air.
maybe it's the line of her neck as she leans in to speak to someone. a shared moment that seems theirs alone, her hand resting lightly on a shoulder.
her hair is short and gray...spiky. a serape of deep topaz flow behind her. there is much discussion about her age.
she slides onto a bar stool and the bartender smiles, placing a glass before her. the exchange of words brings laughter to the barkeep as he turns to another guest.
there is no back to the stool but her posture is straight and her eyes watch the room in the mirror behind the bottles. who is she searching for?
more than one man is turned away with a smile.
I take the stool next to her and order a drink.
I risk a sideways glance only to find her looking directly at me
my drink arrives and I gulp half of it down.
"You're late."
|
|
|
6
Comments
|
|
the mirror to the soul
|
Posted:May 18, 2016 11:35 am
Last Updated:Aug 18, 2016 11:24 am
6819 Views
|
y'all know the blue eye brown eye cultural diversity program, right? Jane Eliot who devised the program and is unapologetic for the difficulties that people who go through the program experience, is also a firm supporter of LGBT rights. no surprises there.
when i was working with HIV/AIDS, we had a day long retreat where our 50+ staff underwent the blue eye, brown eye program. not exactly done on eye color, we were separated more on a class system.
we were placed single file, each yes answer was a step forward. at the end of 10 questions. those people who were furthest back became the blue eyes and those furthest forward became the brown eyes, so to speak.
as the day progressed, more and more slights and inconsistencies in treatment were laid on the browns. more bitterness built and a relatively happy workplace splintered.
it wasn't infected vs uninfected, at least not totally. not race or gender. it was privileged vs unprivileged. in our case and while no one had ever seemed to find this insurmountable before, it became the Himalayas now.
the things we hadn't said to each other. the perceived slights. the unintentional offhand remarks that stung. an almost total disconnect between the people who were ill and those that weren't......the very essence of the program, the mission. it was about feeling patronized.
not being seen. heard.
i remember having a lover for several months when i was younger. we were lying in bed after making love and i asked him what color my eyes were. he didn't know.
i never saw him again. and the honest truth is, i didn't know what color his were either.
|
|
|
3
Comments
|
|
you are in the wrong state
|
Posted:May 14, 2016 4:42 pm
Last Updated:Jun 8, 2016 12:10 pm
7161 Views
|
I smoke
oh please. i'm a grown up so go tell it to someone else
anyway, I was going to NH to buy cigarettes because you can save money (significant money) if you buy them there instead of my home state and my bff was driving. I was navigating with directions to the nearest cigarette handler across state lines.
beautiful day, sunny, warm, not much traffic and then WHAM.....detour, detour....and off we go onto side roads with no signs and no phone reception and all the cars slow down and everyone starts to pull over in confusion.
I spot a Dunks. i'm thrilled because an iced coffee seems like a splendid idea and maybe someone inside knows where we are.
no ice. no iced coffee....no decaf coffee. no lemon donuts. how is this possible? and when I asked what town we are in, not a soul answers. so i broaden the scope and ask if we are in Massachusetts.
Pointing fingers at us, the three counter attendants shriek in unison, "You're in the wrong state." like hyenas, their howls fill the air.
and send us running. pleased of course that we have provided them with dining out material for the foreseeable future and just a wee bit terrified that they have all lost their minds.
a few miles ahead, we happen across a cigarette mart, make our purchase and skedaddle back to saner climes.
Here's my question, wtf was so funny?
seriously.
.
|
|
|
10
Comments
|
|
beignets and bitter coffee
|
Posted:May 8, 2016 2:17 pm
Last Updated:Jun 8, 2016 12:13 pm
7048 Views
|
the soft wind plucked strands of hair and swirled them into the cup she raised to her lips. the coffee was bitter and already growing cold. shifting in her chair she looked to the left, the way he would come.
she lit a cigarette impatiently and blew the smoke out into the warm sunlit plaza. a man moving past cast her a look; then another, willing to stop and linger if she only opened to him. knocking ash to the ground, she turned to the left again and the man moved on.
a waiter neared and murmured words passed between them. her fine neck elongated as she spoke to him, his back stooped as he leaned to hear her. minutes passed and he returned with a beignet and fresh coffee, removing the old cup in which her cigarette had been unceremoniously extinguished. his face showed nothing as he moved on.
her ink stained fingers tore the beignet in half and dunked an edge into the coffee, moving it quickly to her lips, her other hand beneath it to catch the crumbs. eyes closed, she savored the melting of the pastry on her tongue, the bitter coffee taste, the hint of cinnamon.
his lips closed over hers and as ever, as ever, she was lifted from the world.....
|
|
|
3
Comments
|
|
To link to this blog (wickedeasy) use [blog wickedeasy] in your messages.
|
|
|
| Sun |
Mon |
Tue |
Wed |
Thu |
Fri |
Sat |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
7
|
8
|
9
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
13
|
141
|
15
|
16
|
17
|
18
|
19
|
20
|
21
|
22
|
23
|
24
|
25
|
26
|
27
|
28
|
29
|
|
